Marc Bamuthi Joseph and /peh-LO-tah/

An arts activist, spoken word artist, performer, and librettist, Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a pillar of American performance, arts education, and artistic curation. After appearing on Broadway as a young actor, Joseph wrote and performed in a series of poetically-based works for the stage that have toured worldwide, including Word Becomes Flesh, Scourge, and the break/s: a mixtape for stage, all which were produced by MAPP International Productions. His full-evening theater work, red, black & GREEN: a blues was also produced by MAPP, and premiered at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2011) and toured through 2014. red, black & GREEN: a blues was nominated for a Bessie (2013) for “Outstanding Production of a work stretching the boundaries of a traditional form.” The Walker Art Center says of his work that “it’s socially engaged without being didactic..utilizes a high-level of self-awareness, self-deprecation and humor that disarms an audience that worries about being preached to.”

Joseph’s commissions include Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos (2015), the libretto for Home in 7 for the Atlanta Ballet (2011) and theater work for South Coast Repertory Theater’s “Crossroads Commissioning Project.” His essays have been published in “Cultural Transformations: Youth and Pedagogies of Possibility,” Harvard Education Press (2013); and “Total Chaos: Next Elements,” Basic Civitas (2007). Joseph has lectured at more than 200 colleges, has carried adjunct professorships at Stanford and Lehigh, among others, and currently serves as Director of Performing Arts at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. He co-founded “Life is Living,” a national series of one-day festivals designed to activate under-resourced parks and affirm peaceful urban life. Joseph has won numerous grants, including from the National Endowment for the Arts and Creative Capital Foundation. Named one of “America’s Top Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences,” he graced the cover of Smithsonian Magazine (2007), received the inaugural US Artists Rockefeller Fellowship (2007), and was an inaugural Doris Duke artist (2012).